A few of the material texts I encountered during a few days spent in Venice. Here, writers are protesting against the closure of yet more bookshops; the nineteenth-century writer Niccolò Tommaseo dominates a square with books apparently tumbling out from his coat (his statue is affectionately known as ‘cacalibri’); and there’s a shop where a woman can personalize an apron or bib with a calligraphic name in less than a minute!